[Dancecult-l] violence

[tobias c. van Veen]

+ yes, Graham is quite right to point out the ambiguity of what I mean as
'violence'. Especially in a forum where ethnography and social anthropology
is more often the discourse than my own, which works its way from
philosophy. So let me try and make this quasi-philosophical concept of
violence useful in ethno-anthropology or EDMC discourse:

Violence here is, let us say, beyond good and evil, which is to say is
neither moralistic (not good or bad), nor is it related to anger (or any
intentional desire). Rather violence is a structural condition and effect of
difference, which is to say, yes, violence can then produce effects of
liberation (and that violence is another name for the *force* of affect --
Nietzsche's reactionary forces; Deleuze's affects wherein violence
differentiates the body into organ/isation). Violence is structurally
necessary each time difference differentiates itself in order to set its
limit (spatially, temporally, conceptually, physically, etc.). Now this
isn't me talking, this is a little bit of Derrida, Nietzsche and Heidegger,
and so for those not familiar let us put 'violence' as thought above into a
particular strata as 'general' violence which nonetheless has 'real'
effects. 

I.e. everytime rave culture is threatened, its boundaries questioned -- be
it police or State repression, or the introduction of non-ravers, or of
alcohol, or of machismo or predatoriness, or of interrogation of rave's drug
seductions, etc. --  violences arise in offense and defensive formations. It
could take the form of derision to social exclusion to actual, physical
violence (the latter is, in philosophical language here, normative
violence). This is not peculiar to rave culture, of course, but rather
operates on a general level everywhere. Violence marks the logic of
identity, self, collectivity (the violence of the one to the many and
vice-versa; the violence inherent to multiplicity -- Deleuze and Guattari
called such violence (though here I do violence to their concepts)
deterritorialization or the War Machine).

So yes, sampling implies violence -- there has been much written on the
violence of citation, or for example Deleuze's infamous quote of fucking
philosophy up the ass and giving it the bastard children it had to admit as
its own... Derrida's practice of deconstruction is certainly a force of
affirmative violence.

As for the avant-garde and its (modernist) progression, perhaps there is
more overt violence here than rave culture (consider the Breton's praise of
the ultimate Surrealist act of firing blindly into a street, or of easy
targets the Futurists....).

Hopefully this thinking of violence helps: it is a thinking of violence
beyond good and evil --- not related to moralism or judgement: violence here
is not a negative or 'bad' thing, however, if one tries to *purify* the
origin -- and let us take an easy example, Aryan or Nazi racial eugenics --
then all kinds of violences arise that produce effects of death, what D&G
called the 'spiral' of fascism (and fascism is certainly a tendency, or has
been, in rave cultures, perhaps less overt than industrial cultures, but
nonetheless its echoes were and are felt). Every origin is originary
violence, as it excludes and draws its line in the sand, trying to sew
itself shut... hence the violence of metaphysics at the level of the concept
of the (transcendent) origin -- but now we get down the heavy philosophy
road, lots of debate here too, not everyone is on board.

best,

    tobias








> I take extreme machismo to mean chauvanism, and oppression, and thus holding
> the potential for violence towards women which in many cultures is prolific,
> though not necessarily associated with physical violence.
> 
> "Original rave vibe". OK, with that slightly unsophisticated and unscholarly
> phrase (scold me!) I was referring to rave's emergence as acid house in the UK
> 1987/1988 where the term "rave" was first used to refer to a dance movement (i
> think the term came later - though it was used as early as the 1950s to refer
> to jazz events in the UK and appears to have Jamaican derivations), and where
> among other things, on an unprecedented scale females would experience an
> environment in which they were safe to parade their bodies or lose themselves
> without the previous threats of predation and worse. This was not without
> exception of course and things would soon change, and this was downstream from
> the disco and house scenes offering havens for oppressed ethnic and sexual
> minorities.
> 
> As a vibe scribe I dont use the word 'vibe' lightly. I just produced a book
> where this theme is a central trope. The easiest conceptual parallel is
> 'communitas' which I think is a driving force in the commitment to reproduce
> and relive the party, time and again, but i dont believe it is founded on
> violence, but on a desire for difference and manifold freedoms,  temporary as
> they may be. Perhaps some of these trajectories can be read as "violent" under
> the particular definition of violence you appear to be employing, and
> certainly the levels of violence (if by which you mean exclusion) may escalate
> as warehouse ravers are coralled into corporate clubland under the threat of
> fines and nightsticks, but would you extend this then to the entirety of EDMC?
> Im not quite down with you logic but you appear to be saying that raving is
> exlusionary and thus violent. This would be a new perspective on dancing, on
> the social dance experience, as far as i can tell, and perhaps one readily
> appropriated by those zealots who wage brutal campaigns to repress these
> social dance forms, but I would need some convincing.
> 
> What is intriguing is that where you use 'violence', others may use
> 'liberating' or other such terms, which i guess is why these themes really
> should be defined by anyone undertaking research with a question like "Are
> raves violent or peaceful"? This has wider implications. What about
> aesthetics? Is the motivation to produce a music and dance culture which
> differs from the conventional or popular felt by protagonists to be out-dated,
> "cheesy" or "boring", a violent motivation? Is sampling (selecting some sonic
> artifacts and excluding others) an act of violence? Are ambient and chillout
> artists, for instance, advocates of violence? Is the avant-garde violent in
> its pursuit of the progression? What about the desire to escape the routine,
> the everyday, the mundane, through dance - have these kids been waving their
> glow sticks in anger all this time? And what of those who enter and foment
> dance scenes in response to a rampant materialism and spiritual emptiness they
> preceive prevalent in the wider society? These and other scenes orchestrate
> themselves partly on the basis of what they are not, thus defining themselves
> against the values and aesthetics from which they seek to be removed. Are
> these acts of freedom (from) to be reduced to acts of violence?
> 
> I dont expect you to answer these questions. Perhaps this returns us to the
> anthropology of violence, and more to the point, the philosophy of desire and
> transgression, but definitions of violence are helpful, and possibly fruitful.
> 
> On the deferal of body change, sexuality or perhaps maturation, in raving - i
> think that is a very interesting take on some forms of dance culture where
> perhaps the desire to re-live this moment constitutes also a deferal of that
> which Van Gennep called re-aggregation, the final phase of the rite of passage
> where the liminar is transported back into society, changed in some way (e.g
> having become and adult). It is possible that EDM cultural events, from raves
> to festivals, which are returned to time and again, are actually transitional
> worlds, rather than transitional rites, a liminality which is squatted by its
> habitues by virtue of their return to these experiences week in, week out? The
> implications of this are fascinating.
> 
> Graham
> 
>>> Some of these scenes are high on the machismo quotient, and some European
>>> teknivals have become unsafe places for single women, which is contrary to
>>> the
>>> original rave vibe.
>> 
>> Is machismo necessarily associated with violence? I'm just curious on this
>> one, as I don't live in a machismo culture, and if one been to Spain a few
>> times [/jk].
>> 
>> + and I have to ask (with a sly chuckle, heh)... would you hold, Graham, to
>> "original rave vibe" in a published work?
>> 
>> I get what you mean, but.... .... ... origin is complex: each origin is
>> founded through exclusion, which is a (originary) violence. Defending and
>> protecting the "nonviolent" origin of rave would be the first cornerstone of
>> PLUR as something of an idealist discourse, in the casual sense, an
>> ideology.
>> 
>> Also on the pragmatic end, the connection with Madchester, as p g-b
>> mentioned, New Wave, Travelers / Hippies, Punk and anarcho-subcultures seems
>> to suggest all kinds of originary violence to rave cultures... for example,
>> rave appears to be marked in most places and times by the general exclusion
>> -- at least in the ideal form as presented by PLUR -- of 1] the rave as
>> (hetero)sexual meeting place for sex, and 2] the use of alcohol; these two
>> exclusions are both, in their own way, violences that excommunicate certain
>> substances and modes of pleasure.
>> 
>> I've always thought that the candie kid phenomenon -- and its exclusion of
>> "sexual" sexuality, of the act of sex (which isn't to say
>> hetero-penetration, but all the various possibilities of the pleasured,
>> (semi)naked body with another body or many) -- was something of a deferral
>> of bodily change for teenagers, creating the rave as infantile space, as
>> playpen. Sure, lots to say here for the Deleuzeans (rave as polysexuality,
>> Freud freaked out, a big sensory body without organs, e-fest style, cuddle
>> puddles, etc) but the result is also a scene that is easily seduced, used,
>> and corrupted, for it marks a certain denial (I'm tempted to say negation:
>> this would be its violence). Like any infantile state, rave at its candie
>> extreme lacks a certain ability to differentiate the moment of a sexualized
>> act, and to act on it, from the e-body (the tactility of sensory pleasure,
>> body without organs, etc.). One could say that the candie state opens one
>> awareness -- the possibility of asexual bodies, asexual contact even when in
>> bodily formations usually considered sexualized, such as cuddle puddles,
>> backrub orgies -- only to foreclose the awareness of sexual difference and
>> the pleasures of eros. It's almost a violence to the self, to the teenage
>> body becoming sexualized, a denial of one's movement into adulthood, which
>> has its benefits, and yet, so many candie ravers appear to supplement this
>> violence (which produces a certain loss), with massive consumption of
>> ecstasy (chemical supplements to override sexualized neurons, to
>> deprogramme, but also producing burnt-out bodies, bodies no longer capable
>> of differentiation, in that post-rave state, burnt and blissed, slowed,
>> junkie).
>> 
>> New Wave presented an alien body that, although it approached candie, I
>> think managed to sustain something of sexual differentiations (androgynous,
>> ambiguous) and thus of eros.
>> 
>> tV
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> tobias c. van Veen -----------++++
>> http://www.quadrantcrossing.org --
>> McGill Communication & Philosophy
> 
> 
> 
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tobias c. van Veen -----------++++
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org --
McGill Communication & Philosophy